


What Little Time We May Have Left

by SentientBentley



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Fluffy Ending, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Original Character(s), POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), POV Original Female Character, Post-Scene: The Bandstand (Good Omens), Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26958199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SentientBentley/pseuds/SentientBentley
Summary: After breaking up with Crowley and suffering the abuse of the Archangels, Aziraphale meets a human with helpful relationship advice--and who may need some help of her own.This is a mostly-Azi POV (but does include some outsider POV) that details his feelings after the bandstand scene, after the Archangels beat him up, and up until right before he opens the circle in his bookshop.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. Saturday, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> **CW/TW for mention of, and reaction to, a death in a human character's family. I couldn't find a way to tag this so I'm putting it here.**
> 
> This chapter starts right after the Archangels beat up Aziraphale and then leave for the start of Armageddon.

> _I was afraid you would discover me,  
>  Scrutinizing me with your eyes,  
> And discover what sort of man I am.  
> I was afraid I was desperately in love with you._  
> -Echos, ‘Seraphin’ (English translation)

Aziraphale couldn’t breathe. He’d had the wind knocked out of him, and his gut stung not only with the pain of Sandalphon’s punch, but with a gnawing sensation of potential failure. It was like the edges of a page just set on fire, and Heaven had just lit it.  
Armageddon was here, Crowley was mad at him, and he needed to get through to The Almighty. _And if I can’t...I don’t know what will happen. And the trumpets have already sounded..!_ He exhaled heavily, steadying himself against the wall of the diner where the Archangels had confronted him, did a small miracle to heal himself by snapping his fingers behind his back. Adjusted his waistcoat. Oh, had they damaged it? Thankfully not. He huffed. How dare they attack him like this..! Those b--ad angels! They were supposed to be the good guys.

“Your boyfriend in the dark glasses…” Uriel had scoffed at him, and Aziraphale had to admit he’d lit up inside. Had Crowley himself said that...? No, it had to be a joke. He and Crowley had just had a fight, and Aziraphale had said something then he was now regretting--that their ‘arrangement’, as they called it, was now over. Crowley had fled. Aziraphale felt another pain, this one in his heart, a hollow where his longing for Crowley lived. _I don’t want to do this alone...not without you._ But he was going to have to.

He had meant to get a move on and talk to the Almighty, but he realised movement was out of the question now as his vision began to blur. He was swaying...the bustling Soho street becoming like a seesaw now. Then the tears came. This shouldn’t be happening to him....he was only trying to help, to stop things, to save the world...where had he gone wrong..? He found himself sobbing suddenly, the world continuing to spin in front of him.

***

Inside the diner, Kenna Nightingale was waiting tables. She nearly dropped the coffee pot when she saw a group of very well-dressed people beat up a man outside, what little coffee was spilled pooling onto the edge of the table. The couple at the table (more Soho hipsters, Kenna thought) exclaimed as she apologised profusely, thanking a God she didn’t actually believe in that it hadn’t scalded anyone or dripped onto the floor. She was getting more and more used to the clientele. She wasn’t from London, but had taken this job over the summer to help pay for uni. She cursed herself, but felt lucky she’d pinned her chestnut-brown, shoulder-length hair into a bun.

“Can you believe”, the man had been saying before she had spilled the coffee, “what’s been on telly lately? A bloody kraken showing up? Where do they come up with this stuff?”

“Just good CGI”, said the woman. “Might be the people from the advert agencies doing it”. The couple both wore those too-big, black-rimmed glasses, sporting trendy hair. They probably worked at said advert agency. “Maybe even someone from our own agency..!” the man chimed in. There it was. “Environmentally conscious, that”, the woman continued. “I mean, a kraken taking down whaling ships; maybe next, the Loch Ness Monster will be telling us to stop fishing in the lakes. It’s a very clever campaign, if you ask me”. She cocked her head towards Kenna. “What do you think, eh?”

“I think...they should just use facts instead of letting cryptids do the talking, but what do I know”, Kenna said dryly, leaning her thin, average-height frame against the next booth to their left, hand on hip, adjusting her decidedly normal-sized, blue-rimmed glasses, dark brown eyes half-open. Well, she had seen that bit about bloody Atlantis on Instagram, so wasn’t anything possible...? It was like the stuff out of one of those kooky magazines for conspiracy theorists. What was next, aliens…?

The Atlantis Instagram post had gone something like this (with clearly-staged photos, she thought):  
  


>   
>  @pleasurecruiser_morbillo: _Captain’s log. We were sailing on course for Hawaii when we realised that something was amiss! A vast expanse of seabed had risen up beneath us in the night, revealing the sunken city of #Atlantis! The Atlanteans are mingling happily with the passengers; the High Priest even won the quoits contest! #atlantisisforreal_

“Surely you know no one listens to facts anymore”. The woman rolled her eyes. “It’s all about attention now. And who wouldn’t be entertained by that?” she gestured towards the telly.

 _Clearly I’m the only one._ Kenna stared out the window, still trying to contemplate what she had just seen a few minutes ago. For people dressed as fancy as that to _beat someone up in an alleyway, in the broad daylight...?_ There was something really off about it.

The couple at the table were now discussing whether Bigfoot should be telling people to stay out of the forests. She finished cleaning their table and looked up again to see the victim still in the alleyway, sobbing. Whoever had done this was gone now. She blinked. So she really had seen something. What was going on..?  
She rushed outside with a dish towel, in case the victim had any injuries. “Are you alright?” The man looked to be an older gentleman, with short, light blond hair; his face in his hands, wearing a long, tan waistcoat and...was that a bowtie...? At any rate, perhaps he was an actor from the West End.

The gentleman looked up wearily from his hands, soft blue eyes clouded by fatigue, pain, desperation. “I--I don’t know…”. “Oh, you poor dear!” she put a caring hand on his shoulder, feeling how shaky he was. “Let’s get you inside, get you some tea. My name’s Kenna”.

“Now”, she coaxed, sitting him down and bringing him a cup of chamomile tea, hoping it would calm him down, “can you...tell me what happened..? Who were those people--?”

“Oh”, he wasn’t looking at her, but around the room, paranoid, “just...associates. Their conduct was...out of line...I’m going to take it up with a higher authority..!”

_What? What sort of response is that..? He must be more out of it than I thought._

“Um...I think you should call the police”, she said, smiling thinly and widening her eyes.

“No!” he raised his voice slightly, stiffening a bit.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “What do you mean, associates? Coworkers..?”

“Yes; I’m going to raise a complaint. And then the higher authority will fix it...!”

She played along. Maybe he was an actor from the West End, and this was method acting gone too far. “Okay, well...what kind of workplace beats people up..? The mob..?” she raised an eyebrow.

His breathing was more even now; the tea was settling, she thought. He sighed. “The kind who don’t tolerate the breaking of rules. Of any sort”. His eyes were still darting around, although it now seemed to be more out of embarrassment, she sensed, than paranoia. She’d always had a knack for reading people. She saw a darkness flash across his face then, of--was it loss of hope? A deep sadness. This wasn’t acting. The poor man was in some sort of trouble, whether what he was saying was true or not.

“Can I _help_ you with any of it?” she asked calmly, lowering her voice.

“No-I--I wouldn’t dare burden you with my problems”, he slowly, painfully made eye contact. “I can’t--”

“Well, try me”. She raised an eyebrow. “People come in here all the time and burden me with their problems. I’ve heard a lot, and I’ve only been here the summer. It’s no bother, really. Mr…?”.

“Fell, Mr. Fell”. _Oh. Right! The name of the bookshop across the street…!_

“...You’re the bookseller!”

He sighed. “Yes. Well, um, it’s just that...I’ve lost someone...I mean, not....he, um...I pushed him away, I’m afraid, and I don’t know if he’ll come back…” he wrung his hands. “Oh, what have I done?” He looked as if he might cry.

Kenna had no idea if the two events were connected, but she figured all she could do was listen. Nothing had to make sense right now, what with all the craziness going on in the world.

“Have, um…” he was fidgeting with his hands again, nervous. “Have you seen a tall man with sunglasses on come in here..? Bright red hair?”

“Sunglasses on, indoors..? That a new trend?”, she deadpanned, but turned serious when he still looked sad, sighing. “Can I ask what happened?”

He looked down. “We don’t see eye to eye...about important things”.

Well, that was something. She could handle this part. She took a deep breath. “Listen, my mum and I...never saw eye to eye. We fought so many times over the years…until one day we just… never spoke again. And by then it was too late…” her voice trailed off and she cleared her throat, tears forming as she looked away.

“She was so religious. We argued a lot about faith stuff. She resented me because I could never bring myself to believe in all that church rubbish. After a point, she’d made it her life, and had pushed away anyone who didn’t agree. She’d meant everything to me before then, but it wasn’t mutual, I guess…my point is, make up while you still have time. If you don’t, you’ll just be angry forever. And you won’t know how the other person truly felt. You have to ask yourself if that’s worth it”.

She shook her head. “It’s this weird feeling, like, I’m still _angry_ at her, but yet I still _miss_ her”. She wiped her eyes. She’d been holding that in too long. _Oh great, just dump your problems onto a stranger...well, why not...he’s doing that to me...! I’ve been listening to others doing this for too long…I haven’t gotten a chance to tell_ my _story._

Aziraphale thought for a bit. Time, she had said. He and Crowley didn’t have a lot of that left. And he’d hurt Crowley…what if Heaven and Hell destroyed them, and he didn’t get a chance to mend things before then, or even say goodbye…? He couldn’t bear the thought. He looked out the window; it looked like it was about to rain.

“Interestingly”, he said, “religion...in a way…is sort of what we’re disagreeing about...my co-workers as well. I have faith, but lately I’ve...I’ve questioned it. I’m not sure I can continue to represent what they stand for. I know I need to make things right with my love ( _‘My love’? I’ve never said that before…what am I saying?_ ); although, surprisingly, I believe my coworkers have helped me to see that”.

“Oh...you’re a vicar. Of course”. _Bloody great, that is. But he’s not wearing the collar._

“No”, he said, smiling for the first time. “But, I would like to think I’m close to God. Or I was. I--I need to talk to Her as well, actually...I need to go”. He started getting up.

 _Her?_ “You sure you’re fit to walk..?”

“Yes, as much as I can be. Thank you!”

He stopped in the doorway and turned around. “Oh, and, I’m glad you told me about your mother; it helped me to focus on the time I have left”. _Before it all goes pear-shaped._

He was gone before she could say anything, but not having walked off…having literally disappeared…? Like the ones who’d beat him up. What was going on? She went to clean up near the front door and froze. On the ground was a pristine white feather. A large one….too large to be from any bird she could think would live around here.

She had to sit down. _Angels?_ He did say he was close to God… _get a grip_ , she told herself. Kenna didn’t believe in any of this crap. She’d clearly been hallucinating everything. It had been a stressful day. Or, there is a God, and they’re messing with me. That _would_ be her luck.

The rain was coming down now. There was more rubbish on the telly, this time about aliens chastising humans for having caused global warming. _So I was right, aliens were next. This is getting so predictable now..! But...still...what if something really **does** happen?_ She began to spiral.  
_Mum_ , she thought, _I’m sorry about all those things I said. The world is a crazy place right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I might not be able to join you if things get really bad._ She bit her lip. _But_ —she looked down at the angel feather she held in her hand— _I’m going to try._

***

 _I probably shouldn’t have done a miracle just then,_ Aziraphale thought. _But...she needs to know. Or at least, to have an idea. The poor dear hasn’t had faith ever, it seems, and as it is right now, I don’t blame her...but it may give her some comfort to know that angels exist. And if Crowley and I don’t succeed…at least she’ll be in Heaven. Maybe then she can reconcile with her mother…if it comes to that. Now…just have to get back to the bookshop._ He had only miracled over to the other side of the street, for Heaven’s sake; what would it matter now?

He was wringing his hands, focussing on re-entering the bookshop to open the circle that acted as a portal to Heaven. He mentally practised what he was going to say. _I’m prepared to take this all the way to the top. Also, I want to complain about the conduct of a few angels._


	2. Saturday, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Aziraphale reflects on Crowley accosting him in the street and what it means for their relationship as Armageddon draws ever closer._  
>  He prepares to request an audience with The Almighty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the sake of not repeating a canon scene, I’m including Aziraphale’s thoughts after the scene where Crowley confronts him in the street, and before Aziraphale starts up the angelic circle.

Well, that had gone down like a lead balloon, as Crowley would have said. Aziraphale had not expected to be accosted by Crowley. The audacity! What utter nonsense. He had even prepared a speech in his head, apologising, saying yes to running away together, dash it all...but then Crowley had just come in yelling--in the street, no less…! He always had to make a scene, so what did Aziraphale expect--and making it all sound so sudden. So trivial, like it was no big deal! _Lots of spare planets up there, nobody’ll notice us!_ It was suddenly too real, too scary for Aziraphale to face.

Crowley was making Kenna’s advice seem invalid, Aziraphale thought: _What if you want to reconcile with someone before it’s too late, but they’re making it difficult for you to do so...? What if they don’t want to actually resolve anything, but just rush ahead without thinking...?_ It wasn’t right. This wasn’t how apologies worked. Kenna had offered good advice, but it was a little tough to follow with people like Crowley who didn’t care about others’ feelings. He wondered how Kenna was holding up overall, although he could sense her belief in angels had taken hold. Good. She would be safe. He would have to ask her about how that had gone, how she had finally overcome her doubts at last, sceptical though she was.

Possibly the worst part was that Crowley had even ventured so far as to call Aziraphale stupid…! That had really stung, although Aziraphale had tried not to show it, only telling Crowley that he forgave him. That had _not_ been what Crowley had wanted to hear. But besides, running away would make things worse for them, because inevitably, Heaven and Hell would find out about that, too. They’d be fugitives, and their punishment would be even greater. _No,_ he had steeled himself, _stick with your original plan and talk to The Almighty._

He began praying to open the portal. _This had better work. And if it doesn’t, then what…?_ Then he would call Crowley...and tell him what...? That he had lied about telling him if he knew where the Antichrist was? That he had been withholding essential information? He wouldn’t really have a choice, if they were to keep being on their side. Despite what Aziraphale had said back at the bandstand, he really did still want there to be an ‘Our Side’. He’d only withheld the information to protect Crowley, but they had nothing to lose now.

Well, maybe he could try telepathically. He could sense Crowley’s aura always, what he was feeling, and could send his thoughts to him if he wanted. He tried: _My dear, I know we aren’t seeing eye-to-eye right now….but I need to tell you that if my contact with The Almighty doesn’t work…I know where the Antichrist is…and_ \--he swallowed-- _I love you. I always have, I…_ he was crying again. It was due to, in part for being able to tell him this, but also because he was realising, too late, that Crowley’s aura was essentially unreachable. It was still too closed off, too cluttered, for his message to even get through. He wanted to continue to despair at that, but there was simply no time.

 _Well, here goes another message,_ he thought as he began praying to open the circle.

A clap of thunder from outside rattled the bookshop.


	3. Sunday: Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kenna receives a special note and learns something very important._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene occurs in the evening, after the canon event of A & C dining for lunch at The Ritz.
> 
> **Again, CW/TW for mention of and reaction to a death in a human character's family.**

Kenna arrived at the diner to find a handwritten note stuck on the door, settling down in one of the booths to read it. It was written on very nice paper, and handwritten in a fancy cursive. _Who writes like that anymore?_ she scoffed, but she had to admit she was impressed.  
Then she noticed the name at the top: _A.Z. Fell Antiquated Booksellers._ The angel bloke. She had gone to check on him, but the shop had been closed. _I hope he worked things out between him and his boyfriend. And God, maybe._

She’d kept the feather as a token of sorts; something that couldn’t be explained, that she had to believe in because a) there simply had been no other explanation, and b) belief in _something_ had at least given her more strength to carry on with her mum gone, given the circumstances; and c) she’d hoped it would let her join her mum if things had gotten that bad.

She remembered feeling particularly scared recently, and that some of the customers at the diner had been talking about very strange things they’d seen on telly...but she couldn’t remember what those were now, or why she had felt scared to begin with. Both of those things seemed highly irrational; as of today, both had stopped. She chalked it up to stress and fatigue.

She opened the note, which read:

> _Dear Miss Nightingale,_
> 
> _I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to let you know that I did eventually mend things with my love. It turns out, we have all the time in the world now. Your story stuck with me, and I was able to hold onto it, with my hope that I could, indeed, reconcile things. It served me well, although he was quite stubborn at first, and I wasn’t sure we would be reconciled at all...!  
>  But in the end we realised we are each other’s world. We held hands…dined at The Ritz…smiled at each other as we never had before. I thought you might find it interesting that as we dined, a nightingale did in fact sing in Berkeley Square. I really should thank you sometime for your advice, with my love in tow! Please come by the bookshop anytime for tea, or we could pop by the diner! I would love for you to meet him!_
> 
> _P.S. I’m happy to report that your Mother is in Heaven, and she misses you. She regrets the way she treated you during her time on Earth, and she is watching over you now. She sends all her love, and she knows she'll see you one day._

Kenna smiled, and took a sip of her tea. She hadn’t told him her last name, but of course he would know. She certainly would need to stop by the bookshop to thank Mr. Fell for his kindness, and meet his boyfriend. And she had so many questions.

The evening clouds sat over the horizon now, a soft pink. No rain in sight.

 _Thanks, Mum. I miss you too. And…  
  
…I forgive you._  
  
A teardrop fell into the tea.


End file.
